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Amazon Web Services Expands in China

Amazon Web Services announced the general availability of its second Chinese cloud region today, providing customers with another environment. It is located in the Ningxia autonomous region in central China and is made up of two separate Availability Zones, each made up of a collection of datacenters.

Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology Co. Ltd. will operate the datacenters there, though it will provide many of the AWS services that are available in other regions. That arrangement mirrors the one that AWS has with Sinnet to operate its Beijing cloud region, Venture Beat reported.

China is a rapidly growing market for technology services, and this new region could help AWS capitalize on that. While the region can provide computing capabilities for Chinese companies, it will also allow businesses outside the country to have an execution environment for their technology inside China.

As with the rest of the cloud market, AWS faces heavy competition. Microsoft operates a pair of cloud regions in China, with datacenters in Shanghai and Beijing. In addition, homegrown tech titans like Tencent and Alibaba also offer their own cloud computing services. Those two companies offer compute capacity both inside and outside China.

The news comes about a month after AWS had to sell hardware in its Beijing datacenters to Sinnet, as part of the company’s response to new regulations from the Chinese government. At the time, the cloud provider said that it remains committed to the Chinese market, and this launch shows that the tech titan’s plans continue to march along.